1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of communications, and in particular, to a multi-services communications device that connects communications devices, such as a computer, a telephone device, and a video device, to a communications network.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A network interface card allows a computer to communicate with a communications network. Typically, the computer provides control input to the network interface card. Unfortunately, communications performance is adversely affected by using the computer to control the network interface card.
The computer typically executes an operating system and a variety of software applications. Thus, computer processing time is shared across multiple software components. Communications performance suffers as a result because the computer may not provide control input to the network interface card in a timely manner. Since many forms of communication are real-time in nature, such as a telephone conversation, the lack of timely computer control can severely disrupt communications. In addition one of the software applications may cause the computer to crash, so that no control input is provided to the network interface card. In this case, communications would cease altogether.